Pepper / INK /

Javved

Javved had heard the rumors, that some of those he’d dealt with had come down with Shadow Plague, but he wouldn’t believe it. He felt fine, it was just the damn ink, it wouldn’t set, not after his brother destroyed the binding. Not after his brother had left him out there to die. After he had forced him to commit the taboo, and then turned him away.

The ink had protected him. Both his mother’s ink from the desert, and what was left of his father’s ink. It cared for him, it had kept him alive out there in the hot sun, it had found him water and shelter, and it had cared for him until he could stagger to Cold iron. He’d been found there leaned against one of the iron rods meant to keep the evil at bay, it was so cold it was like ice, it felt good against the burns.

The sun had been down before he had managed to get there, and the moonlight felt good against his hot skin, as did the ice-cold iron. There were lots of conveyances and carpets that passed him by. He was too weak to move, and maybe a lot of them thought he was dead, but finally a carpet stopped.

The ones who found him were a kindly family, They had taken him onto their flying carpet and nursed him to health, but they couldn’t explain what was wrong with him, why some days his magic worked, and other days it didn’t. They taught him dark Alchemy, they weren’t necromancers, though they taught him everything he needed to know. But they said that there was nothing they wanted badly enough to exchange for it, and neither of them were the type who could kill another for something they wanted. So, they lived simply. While they did not turn their nose up at things he brought them, they certainly didn’t encourage his dabbling.

And that was the one thing that made him feel bad. That they had to be sacrificed to his goals. In fact, that night still plagued his dreams. Along with the last thing he had said to his new parents. "Don’t cry mama, it will all be over soon. Close your eyes papa, you shouldn’t see this."

Neither one of them had spoken, had begged for their lives, they knew they weren’t going to get that, so they were content to die together. Neither one of them condemned him either. His dad just hugged his wife, kissed her softly and closed his eyes, humming the song of moonlight. "It’s ok Estel. It’s going to be ok, I have you."

That was the first and only time he’d been sick. Everything he had eaten for the previous week it seemed had come back up, and the ink had slimed off of him, covering the bodies of the two people he loved more than anything, and absorbing their power, and then it came back to him, leaving them bloody and cold.

As the nagging feeling of something wrong faded into the song of the Ink that told him everything was ok, he made one more choice. Throwing his hands out, he burned their remains and the circle, determined that no one would ever know about this. No one would know that he had been weak, that he had sobbed as he sank the blade into first her back, and then his. No one would know that he had done that to his parents. Or the closest thing he had to parents.

But he didn’t know that Sebastian Emmett stood in the shadows watching him, and that it was he who came to the rescue, it was he who had made sure he had the strength to get to cold iron, he who had alerted the family, and it was he who had taught Damien the spell. Though to be proper he should call him Javved, since he had killed tonight, making himself a worker of blood, and soon he would have him raising the dead, and then he would be Necromancer, and he could destroy the Emmett line once and for all.

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Next Chapter: Shum (unlucky)